I was just checking out JDunderground.com and it is so bleeping depressing. I swear it seems like everybody there wants to off themselves at any minute. It kind of makes me wonder is this what lies ahead for me when I finally finish school and get out into the job market? But then I think again and wonder if they are just losers from the bottom of their class? Don't misunderstand me I know the market is tough, but geez!

Logged

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

I was just checking out JDunderground.com and it is so bleeping depressing. I swear it seems like everybody there wants to off themselves at any minute. It kind of makes me wonder is this what lies ahead for me when I finally finish school and get out into the job market? But then I think again and wonder if they are just losers from the bottom of their class? Don't misunderstand me I know the market is tough, but geez!

Depressed lawyers (or people in any field, for that matter) could be the way they are if they were in the bottom, middle, or top of their class. A lot of bored, irritable, and depressed people go on that site (as well as other similar sites, like this one)...don't even bother reading that garbage.

The job market is brutal for people at the top, middle and bottom of their class. JDUnderground is actually a fairly realistic picture of what life is like for those who didn't go to a T14 school (or even some of those who went to a T14 but were at the bottom of the class).

There just aren't jobs out there. A friend of mine is searching for jobs in a state in which precisely six -- yes, just 6 -- attorney jobs have been posted in the past two weeks in the largest city's newspaper. (The metro area this newspaper covers has about 750,000 residents.)

So, when you have only 6 legal openings and 3 or 4 law schools in the state... well, you do the math. It's not pretty.

The job market is brutal for people at the top, middle and bottom of their class. JDUnderground is actually a fairly realistic picture of what life is like for those who didn't go to a T14 school (or even some of those who went to a T14 but were at the bottom of the class).

There just aren't jobs out there. A friend of mine is searching for jobs in a state in which precisely six -- yes, just 6 -- attorney jobs have been posted in the past two weeks in the largest city's newspaper. (The metro area this newspaper covers has about 750,000 residents.)

So, when you have only 6 legal openings and 3 or 4 law schools in the state... well, you do the math. It's not pretty.

I love how so many posters to lsd think that there is one job market that stretches from coast to coast. People, any statistician, social scientist or economist worth his weight in dirt will tell you how misleading it is to draw conclusions from aggregate data (or, in this particualar case, from qualitative data) with the assumption that said data has a direct relationship to any and every particular case. Just for the sake of furthering the discussion, which state are you talking about, Luziana?

Does it matter? You're just going to ignore everything I say, and continue to pretend like all the posters here will get BigLaw jobs (or jobs at all) after graduation because of course their job market is different.

I myself am in a major city on the East Coast, not the same market my friend is in, with the good fortune of having a full-time job. Reportedly, the job market here is better than most other places in the U.S., and better than the market my friend is looking in. But that doesn't mean it's fun here. Many of my former classmates (2008) still don't have jobs at all -- and the ones that do often are working as contract attorneys for low pay that barely makes the student loan payments. Some of them were in the bottom of the class, yes, but others were not. One law review board member from the class of 2008 reportedly only got a job offer about two months ago.

Our office just posted a single entry-level opening and got 200 applications in the first 24 hours. And the applications keep on coming.

Sorry, I'm not one for spewing rainbows and flowers and sugarcoating the truth.

Does it matter? You're just going to ignore everything I say, and continue to pretend like all the posters here will get BigLaw jobs (or jobs at all) after graduation because of course their job market is different.

You are conflating your statements and that is messing up your argument. I never mentioned biglaw at all as you did, and I don't think the OP did either. I was talking about the job markets for attorneys, which would include biglaw and all other avenues down which someone could go. You also said, "There just aren't jobs out there," and proceeded with a bit of qualitative evidence.Believe me, I don't have any illusions about my market, but yes, all markets are different (I imagine the East coast is particularly saturated)for a variety of complex reasons and absolute statements like the ones that you are making just aren't true. I do appreciate the anecdotal evidence that you proffer ande think people should pay attention to these stories, if only to gauge within themselves whether or not going to law school is really something they want to do. However, individuals who truly want to be lawyers should not be deterred by an economy whose condition four or five years from now not even the brightest minds can reliably predict.